


Hyper Light Drifter WIP

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Hyper Light Drifter
Genre: Exploration, Gen, Hurt, Worldbuilding, at this point i'm fairly sure nobody is reading these, but i don't know if i have the steam to finish it, not THAT kind, so hey have a WIP i'm proud of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 18:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21378742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: The Drifter wrapped themselves tighter in their tattered cloak, shivering, leaning nearer to the fire.When they slept there was nothing but blackness behind their eyes, or the maddening visions of polluted oceans running scarlet with blood and something else--the sun on the horizon a colorless cube of impossibly perfect geometry, pulsing with searing light.!!! IMPORTANT NOTICE!!! If you read this on a paid app, you have been swindled! It is originally hosted on archiveofourown.org and can be searched and read there FOR FREE!!!Please come visit the website and comment, and let me know if that is how you found me!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Hyper Light Drifter WIP

Vast spans of ruined builings stretching up and up. The smell of the ocean an damp moss. Stone.  
The Drifter huddled closer to the fire, prodded the few faltering flames with a twig before eventually tossing it into the fitful, weak flames. 

There, the wind beat against the rocks, and even in the shadow of the giant effigy they were not entirely dry; the cold damp from the ocean and the spray made the area eternally fogged, and the wind meeding the mountains forced the wind into storms. 

The Drifter wrapped themselves tighter in their tattered cloak, shivering, leaning nearer to the fire.  
When they slept there was nothing but blackness behind their eyes, or the maddening visions of polluted oceans running scarlet with blood and something else--the sun on the horizon a colorless cube of impossibly perfect geometry, pulsing with searing light.  
The Drifter woke with ringing ears, coughing harshly. Their hand left their mouth stained pinkish-red; but after a moment, a always, the stains blackened, then faded into ash, before dissolving as if it had never been there.  
Only the pain remained.  
The Drifter cleared their throat and sat upright. It was not light out--or, if it was morning, the sun could not penetrate the dense, purple-dark clouds overhead. 

~

Everyone avoided their eyes.  
The Drifter did not know if this was normal, was polite etiquette or not. They had a vague, fleeting memory of having learned something of that sort, but how long ago and from whom evaded them.  
They did not know.

Outside the Apothecary’s, there was a woman who was like an otter, kneeling near a patch of upturned earth and carefully patting it down around a strange-looking round fleshy bulb. A white flower with three lobed petals and two long, slender leaves was sticking up out of the bulb.  
She eyed them at first with shock, and then as it passed, with a kind of apathy: the Drifter had no idea why.

Inside they found the Apothecary, a rat-man stirring something that smelled like crushed grass in a mortar and pestle. Shelves and shelves of leaves and roots in precious jars of real glass stood in orderly rows on the shelves behind him.  
The Drifter stood a moment on the other side ot the counter, mentally pinging their Sprite until the translation interface activated; even then, they could do little more than communicate with gestures. The Sprite helpfully translated the rat-man’s speech into images, overlaid in grainy black and white over the Drifter’s vision. 

The Apothecary handed them a tattered laminated brochure advertising their wares, again written in a language the Drifter could not read and did not recognize. The Drifter shook their head, waving it away. They held up three precious gearbits and pointed at one of the vials od heal-all on the wall, and the Apothecary nodded once in understaning before fetching the vial. 

~

When the Drifter awakened, the first thing they saw was a smallish fire.  
Memory came rushing back in jumbled snippets and dashes--the woods, the green-maned wolves, the black bark of the trees--but it was to no order. 

The Drifter was lying face-down in the dirt in an ungainly sprawl, their Sprite hovering near their shoulder where they could feel the soft, comforting sense of electric static coming from it.  
The Drifter wondered for a time--a long time?--why the man did not attack them. 

Instead he spoke soft, low words to the Drifter and sat near them, as they laid face-down in the dirt, unable to even move to defend themselves. He kept his hands where the Drifter could see them, and he moved very slowly, and very deliberately.  
Some of his words were strange, but the Drifter’s Sprite patched most of it up, smoothing over with a series of images whenever he spoke.  
And the other man had a Sprite of his own, as well!  
The Drifter wondered if he could explain anything to them, if he knew anything.  
Exhaustion was pulling at them like gravity towing a comet. If they closed their eyes, they wondered, would they open them and find the kind stranger had been nothing more than another hallucination? Or would he still be there, flesh and bone, when they awoke?


End file.
